Here is an interesting artist that's new to me, and I wanted to share his music.

Featuring piano and trumpet;


          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VN8zH366M8

You're just plain wrong, and I can tell our disagreement will never be resolved.
Keep in mind - Louis Armstrong was inspired not by piano, but by the rags bottles and bones guy playing his heart out on a tin horn.
King Oliver, Buddy Bolden, Louis... the roots of jazz aren't traced to piano.

Louis Armstrong, Charley Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie, are three of the most renowned names in jazz; two trumpets and one sax, no piano.

We hear of "Concert pianists", but that's in another Genre of music. I like long piano solos, but that's as far as it goes. A solo piano all night long grates on my ears; eventually they begin to sound like "Schroeder"; that's the kid with the toy piano in Peanuts.

Your ears are specially tuned to pianos, which is why you like them so much. My ears are more tuned to sax and trumpet. That being said, I wouldn't even want to hear a solo sax or trumpet all night long, no matter who played it.

It just boils down to; "Different strokes for different folks".

But on the serious side, my ears are way out of whack compared to the experts when it comes to piano. As an example Cecil Taylor, and Andrew Hill are very highly rated pianists that I could live without an abundance of them in my collection, maybe you have a different view.


          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EstPgi4eMe4


          https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=andrew+hill+spiral

In Jazz, designating any one instrument as “the most important” is, at best, pointless. Just as pointless as designating any one player on any given instrument as “the best”. At worst, it belies a lack of appreciation for some of the basics and nuances of the art form; IMO.

In an art form in which individuality is a key aspect of true excellence the idea of “best” is like saying that Granny Smith apples are the “best” apples. There may be a best Granny Smith, but it doesn’t make that the best of all apples. Try saying that to someone that loves Honey Crisp apples instead! Moving on to bananas 😊:

No instrument in Jazz is “the most important”. First, piano was not the first harmony instrument to gain widespread use in (early) Jazz ensembles; the banjo was. Going even further back in the birth of Jazz, it was the guitar in the blues that was the most common harmony instrument. So, what makes an instrument “important”? Seems to me that, once again, it is what is done with it in the sense of how it innovated and contributed to the development of style in jazz. As such, ANY instrument can, and many did, accomplish that. Some of the best and most innovative Jazz was played by, for instance, Sonny Rollins in his piano-less trio recordings. And, how does one reconcile the notion with the fact that a relative minority of the greatest musicians in jazz played piano?

Thanks for the New Orleans clips. A lot of good stuff.